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User blog:Capi3101/WCRPG Update for December 14, 2015
Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the Weekly WCRPG Update. I'm typing this one up around 4:00 AM local time, so hopefully this update will make sense. Or at least is grammatically correct (since I started this sentence with a conjunction, though, I'm probably not off to the best of starts on that front...). This past week was largely spent in Tarakh'ga, Chapter 2.1 of the Elegy campaign. I had three overnights this past week and used the time to work mainly on the mission's details. On Monday, my focus was on the second encounter, the one on the T'Kon H'hra space station's flight deck (where the point is to get Bloodeye's crew to steal a shuttle without being detected). A lot of the work on Monday set up the work that happened with that encounter as the week progressed. On Tuesday, I worked a little more with some of the details of some of the other encounters in the chapter, and finished up the details of the third encounter (a chase that happens if and only if the players royally botch the first two encounters). Some general work took place on the resolution text of the fourth and sixth encounters, and some work was done on the setup of the eighth and final encounter of the mission. Wednesday morning was spent working on a map for the second encounter. Even as simple and non-detailed as it is, it took me a full three hours to build that map. Most of that time was spent doing the research and answering questions - like how big is a Kilrathi Star Post, how big is a Kilrathi Naktarg shuttle (at least how I've established it so far), what all would be in the flight bay, what is the likely architecture of the structure, etc. It was only after I'd done all that measuring and note-checking I built the map itself. The site at pyromancers.com, incidentally, has a pretty nice little RPG map maker; I ultimately used it to build the map and then used MS paint to add some remaining elements (most notably the shuttle itself, with that image taken from the CIC's ship database). I came to the conclusion during that whole process that the shuttle would probably too wide to fit through the doors of the station's flight bay, but I decided to fudge it since really only those of you who are paying attention would likely notice. The map work did require me to make a few adjustments to the details of the second encounter, but these were minor and I think the encounter is a lot tighter now as a result of the work done. The work on the map also made me realize that I was liable to need a number of battle maps for the remainder of the Elegy campaign, and I've spent most of my time since then doing similar research (looking at the dimensions of a Fralthi-II class cruiser and a Confederation Mining base) in preparation of generating maps. Prior to typing this up this morning, I was working on the internal structure of a Drayman-II transport, and I imagine I'll at least have made significant progress on maps there by the time the week is out (the bridge is done, while the upper dormitory level was done until I realized that the rooms didn't need a common bathroom). I also did a couple of other things this past week, with most of these miscellaneous items happening on Tuesday. I knew for some time that I had an error with the Prayer of the Saguk at the top of the Elegy TOC. I had it as H'asgathni'rakh dunai du ma'aiy'hra - which translates as "will give my honor to me again this today"; the egregious error there was that I had used aiy'hra = today instead of esh'ga = day, leading to a sentence that already made little sense. The new version is Jaqduni'rakh dunai du ma'esh'ga- "Restore my honor to me again this day". Not only does this correct the prior error, it increases the imperativeness of the statement. I did a skimthrough of Freedom Flight on Wednesday to get a few more clues about Kilrathi behavior and mannerisms. So far I've been following the rules there as far as how the Kilrathi in Elegy have behaved for the most part (the big exception there is Gux'a P'nt, who I have nodding a fair amount - which I'll chock up to "having spent far too much time around Terrans"). I also added a second dedication to Elegy for my new son below the dedication to Aaron Allston on the front page. The kid may not be getting a full RPG system dedicated to him like his brothers, but Elegy is looking like it's going to take just as long to finish (though I suppose he might someday get an RPG system dedicated to him; I'm still not discounting the possibility that somebody might want to pay me to build one someday...). My Plan for this coming week hasn't changed much from last week - continue work on Tarakh'ga, filling in the details of mission encounters and working on the prologue narrative and epilogue dialogue as much as possible. I have overnights each day this week, so I do anticipate getting a fair amount of work done. I also need to work on a map tile set for Kilrathi sites - a set of maps for Shal'kuz Mang's / Ni'rakh's interiors will likely be necessary before work on Tarakh'ga can be truly completed. My hope there is to be able to GIMP a few alterations to the tiles on the pyromancers site. I've taken a look at some examples of Kilrathi architecture (interior shots from WC2, WC3 and Academy, and even a few of Aginor's interiors from his upcoming Hand of Sivar mod for Saga) to gather ideas there. The big trick there will be effectively importing them into the pyromancers tool; there is a method of doing this, and hopefully the final products will look convincing. Well, that's all I've got for this week. The next scheduled update will be on December 21st, though at this time my plans for the week of Christmas have not yet been set, so I don't know at what time that update will take place; it could be later in the day than 14Z, and there is a remote chance that it won't happen at all. If I decide to skip the update, I'll try to let y'all know in advance. Y'all have a pleasant week. Category:Blog posts